This list of genocides includes estimates of all deaths which were directly or indirectly caused by genocides that are recognised in significant scholarship as genocides. It excludes mass killings which have not been explicitly defined as genocidal, but called mass murder, crimes against humanity, politicide, classicide, or war crimes, such as the Thirty Years' War (4.5 to 8 million deaths), Japanese war crimes (30 million deaths), the Red Terror (50,000 to 200,000 deaths), the Atrocities in the Congo Free State (1.5 to 13 million deaths), the Great Purge (0.7 to 1.2 million deaths), the Great Leap Forward and the famine which followed it (15 to 55 million deaths).[1] A broader list of genocides, ethnic cleansing and related mass persecution is available. Genocides in history includes cases where there is less consensus among scholars as to whether they constituted genocide.
Scholarship varies on the definition of genocide employed when analysing whether events are genocidal in nature. The United Nations Genocide Convention, not always employed, defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group".[2]
The term genocide is contentious and as a result its definition varies. This list only considers acts which are recognised in significant scholarship as genocides.
Event | Location | Period | Estimated killings | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
From | To | Lowest | Highest | ||
Description | Proportion of group killed | ||||
Rohingya genocide | Rakhine State, Myanmar | 2016 | Present | 9,000–13,700[3] | 43,000[4] |
The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017.[5] The crisis forced over a million Rohingya to flee to other countries. Most fled to Bangladesh, resulting in the creation of the world's largest refugee camp,[6] while others escaped to India, Thailand, Malaysia, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia, where they continue to face persecution. | Before the 2015 refugee crisis, the Rohingya population in Myanmar was around 1.0 to 1.3 million. Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya refugees have fled to southeastern Bangladesh alone, and more to other surrounding countries. More than 100,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar are confined in camps for internally displaced persons. | ||||
Iraqi Turkmen genocide | Islamic State-controlled territory in northern Iraq | 2014 | 2017 | 3,500 | 8,400 |
The Iraqi Turkmen genocide refers to a series of killings, rapes, executions, expulsions, and sexual slavery of Iraqi Turkmen by the Islamic State.[7] It began when ISIS captured Iraqi Turkmen land in 2014 and it continued until ISIS lost all of their land in Iraq. | |||||
Yazidi genocide | Islamic State-controlled territory in northern Iraq and Syria | 2014 | 2017 | 2,100[8] | 5,000[9] |
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State throughout Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017.[10][11][12] It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men.[13] | By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava.[14][15] | ||||
Darfur genocide | Darfur, Sudan | 2003 | Present | 98,000[16] | 500,000[17] |
The Darfur genocide is the systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people which has occurred during the war in Darfur and the ongoing war in Sudan in Darfur.[18] The genocide, which is being carried out against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, has led the International Criminal Court to indict several people for crimes against humanity, rape, forced transfer and torture. An estimated 200,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2005.[19] | |||||
Effacer le tableau | North Kivu, DR Congo | 2002 | 2003 | 60,000[20][21] | 70,000[20] |
Effacer le tableau ("erasing the board") was the operational name given to the systematic extermination of the Bambuti pygmies by rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The primary objective of Effacer le tableau was the territorial conquest of the North Kivu province of the DRC and ethnic cleansing of Pygmies from the Congo's eastern region.[21][22] | 40% of the Eastern Congo's Pygmy population killed[N 1] | ||||
Massacres of Hutus during the First Congo War | Kivu, Zaire | 1996 | 1997 | 200,000[23] | 233,000[23] |
During the First Congo War, Rwandan, Congolese, and Burundian Hutu men, women, and children in villages and refugee camps were hunted down and became victims of mass killings in eastern Zaire (now named the Democratic Republic of the Congo).[24] | |||||
Rwandan genocide | Rwanda | 1994 | 491,000[25] | 800,000[26] | |
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.[27] During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower.[28][29][30] The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.[31] | 60–70% of Tutsis in Rwanda killed[25] 7% of Rwanda's total population killed[25] | ||||
Bosnian genocide | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 1992 | 1995 | 31,107[32] | 62,013[32] |
The Bosnian genocide comprised localised massacres, including those in Srebrenica[33] and Žepa, committed by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995, as well as the scattered ethnic cleansing campaign throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska[34] during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War.[35] | More than 3% of the Bosniak population of Bosnia and Herzegovina died during the Bosnian War.[36] | ||||
Isaaq genocide | Somaliland, Somalia | 1987 | 1989 | 50,000[37][38] | 200,000[39] |
The Genocide of Isaaqs was the systematic, state-sponsored massacre of Isaaq civilians between 1988 and 1991 by the Somali Democratic Republic under the dictatorship of Siad Barre.[40] This included the leveling and complete destruction of the second- and third-largest cities in Somalia, Hargeisa (90 percent destroyed)[41] and Burao (70 percent destroyed) respectively,[42] and had caused 400,000[43][44] Somalis (primarily of the Isaaq clan) to flee their land and cross the border to Hartasheikh in Ethiopia as refugees,[45] with another 400,000 being internally displaced.[46] | |||||
Anfal campaign | Kurdistan Region, Iraq | 1986 | 1989 | 50,000[47] | 182,000[48] |
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds[49] because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate.[50] The Iraqis committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.[51] | |||||
Gukurahundi | Matabeleland, Zimbabwe | 1983 | 1987 | 8,000[52] | 300,000[53] |
The Gukurahundi was the systematic massacre of the Ndebele people by Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.[54] The Gukurahundi was initiated because the ZAPU party, the main Zimbabwean opposition party, found the majority of its support among the Ndebele people, leading Mugabe to conclude that they must be exterminated in order to eliminate support for the ZAPU.[55] The Gukurahundi began in 1983, and continued until the signing of the 1987 Unity Accords, during which time about 20,000 Ndebele were killed and sent to re-education camps. | |||||
Sabra and Shatila massacre | Beirut, Lebanon | 1982 | 460[56] | 3,500[57] | |
The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killings of civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It was perpetrated by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, and supported by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that had surrounded Beirut's Sabra neighbourhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp.[58][59][60][61] | |||||
Cambodian genocide | Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) | 1975 | 1979 | 1,386,734[62][63] | 3,000,000[64][65] |
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot.[66] The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant.[67][68] Up to 20,000 mass graves, the infamous Killing Fields, were uncovered, where at least 1,386,734 murdered victims found their final resting place.[69] | 15–33% of total population of Cambodia killed,[67][70] including 99% of Cambodian Viets, 50% of Cambodian Chinese and Cham, 40% of Cambodian Lao and Thai, 25% of Urban Khmer, 16% of Rural Khmer | ||||
East Timor genocide | East Timor, Indonesia | 1974 | 1999 | 85,320[71] | 196,720[72] |
The East Timor genocide refers to the "pacification campaigns" of state terrorism which were waged by the Indonesian New Order government during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor. | 13% to 44% of East Timor's total population killed (See death toll of East Timor genocide) | ||||
Genocide of Acholi and Lango people | Uganda | 1972 | 1978 | 100,000[73] | 300,000[73] |
After Idi Amin overthrow the regime of Milton Obote in 1971, he declared the Acholi and Lango tribes enemies, as Obote was a Lango and he saw the fact that they dominated the army as a threat.[73]In January 1972, Amin issued an order to the Ugandan army ordering that they assemble and kill all Acholi or Lango soldiers, and then commanded that all Acholi and Lango be rounded up and confined within army barracks, where they were either slaughtered by the soldiers or killed when the Ugandan air force bombed the barracks.[73] | |||||
Ikiza | Burundi | 1972 | 80,000[74][75] | 300,000[76] | |
The Ikiza was a series of mass killings which were committed in Burundi in 1972 by the Tutsi-dominated army and government, primarily against educated and elite Hutus who lived in the country. | As much as 10% to 15% of the Hutu population of Burundi killed[76] | ||||
Bangladesh genocide | East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) | 1971 | 300,000[77] | 3,000,000[78][79] | |
The Bangladesh genocide was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis, especially Bengali Hindus, residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Razakars.[80] It began as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.[81] | 2%[citation needed] to 4% of the population of East Pakistan[82] | ||||
Zanzibar genocide | Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) | 1964 | 13,000[83] | 20,000+[84] | |
In January 1964 during and following the Zanzibar Revolution, Arab residents of Zanzibar were targeted for violence by the island’s majority Black African population.[85] Arabs were mass murdered, raped, tortured and deported from the island by Black African militiamen under the Afro-Shirazi Party and Umma Party. The exact death toll is unknown, although scholarly sources estimate the number of Arabs killed to be between 13,000 and more than 20,000.[83][84] | 25% or more of the Arab population (50,000 people) of Zanzibar was killed by the end of 1964.[83] | ||||
Guatemalan genocide | Guatemala | 1962 | 1996 | 166,000[86] | 166,000[87] |
The Guatemalan genocide was the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive US-backed Guatemalan military governments.[88] Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilians at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965, and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of.[89][90] | 40% of the Maya population (24,000 people) of Guatemala's Ixil and Rabinal regions were killed[citation needed] | ||||
Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush | Soviet Union | 1944 | 1948 | 100,000[91] | 400,000[92] |
The deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, or Ardakhar Genocide, was the Soviet forced transfer of the whole of the Vainakh (Chechen and Ingush) populations of the North Caucasus to Central Asia on 23 February 1944, during World War II. The expulsion was ordered by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria after approval by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as a part of a Soviet forced settlement program and population transfer that affected several million members of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1950s. | 23.5% to almost 50% of total Chechen population killed[93] | ||||
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars | Crimea, Soviet Union | 1944 | 34,000[98] | 195,471[99] | |
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars was the ethnic cleansing and the cultural genocide of at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars which was carried out by the Soviet authorities from 18 to 20 May 1944, supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, mostly women, children, and the elderly, even Communist Party members and Red Army members, to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. | The deportation and following exile reduced the Crimean Tatar population by between 18%[98] and 46%.[100][N 2] | ||||
The Holocaust | Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe | 1941 | 1945 | 5,100,000 |
7,000,000 |
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to refer to the persecution of these other groups. | Around 2/3 of the Jewish population of Europe.[106][107] | ||||
German atrocities committed against Soviet POWs[108] (part of the Generalplan Ost) | German-occupied Europe | 1941 | 1945 | 3,300,000[109] | 3,500,000[110] |
During World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in a policy of deliberate maltreatment of Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), in contrast to their treatment of British and American POWs. This policy, which amounted to deliberately starving and working to death Soviet POWs, was grounded in Nazi racial theory, which depicted Slavs as sub-humans (Untermenschen).[111][112] | |||||
The Holocaust in Croatia | Independent State of Croatia (now Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) |
1941 | 1945 | 248,000 |
548,000 |
The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia involved the genocide of Jews, Serbs and Romani within the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a fascist puppet state that existed during World War II, led by the Ustaše regime, which ruled an occupied area of Yugoslavia. The Ustaše were the only quisling forces in Yugoslavia who operated their own extermination camps for the purpose of murdering Jews and members of other ethnic groups. | 77% of Jews in the Independent State of Croatia | ||||
Genocide of Bosniaks and Croats by the Chetniks | Yugoslavia | 1941 | 1945 | 50,000[116] | 68,000[116] |
The Chetniks, a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force, committed numerous war crimes during the Second World War, primarily directed against the non-Serb population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, mainly Muslims and Croats, and against Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters. | |||||
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation[117][118] (part of the Generalplan Ost) | German-occupied Europe | 1939 | 1945 | 1,800,000[119] | 3,000,000[120][121] |
Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and Axis collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland,[122] along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II,[123] included the genocide of millions of Polish people, especially the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles.[a] These mass killings were enacted by the Nazis with further plans that were justified by their racial theories, which regarded Poles and other Slavs, and especially Jews, as racially inferior Untermenschen. | From 6% to 10% (1.8 to 3 million) of the total Polish gentile population.[121] In addition, 3 million Polish Jews were killed during the Holocaust in Poland (90% of Polish Jews).[119] | ||||
Polish Operation of the NKVD | Soviet Union | 1937 | 1938 | 111,091[125] | 250,000[126] |
The Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937–1938 was an anti-Polish mass-ethnic cleansing operation of the NKVD carried out in the Soviet Union against Poles (labeled by the Soviets as "agents") during the period of the Great Purge. It was ordered by the Politburo of the Communist Party against so-called "Polish spies" and customarily interpreted by NKVD officials as relating to all Poles. It resulted in the sentencing of 139,835 people, and summary executions of 111,091 Poles living in or near the Soviet Union.[127] | 22% of the Polish population of the USSR was "sentenced" by the operation (140,000 people)[128] | ||||
Parsley massacre | Dominican Republic | 1937 | 12,000 | 40,000[129] | |
The Parsley massacre was a mass killing of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic's northwestern frontier and in certain parts of the contiguous Cibao region in October 1937. Dominican Army troops from different areas of the country[130]: 161 carried out the massacre on the orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.[131] Many died while trying to flee to Haiti across the Dajabón River that divides the two countries on the island;[132] the troops followed them into the river to cut them down, causing the river to run with blood and corpses for several days. The massacre claimed the lives of an estimated 14,000 to 40,000 Haitian men, women, and children.[133] Dominican troops interrogated thousands of civilians demanding that each victim say the word "parsley" (perejil). If the accused could not pronounce the word to the interrogators' satisfaction, they were deemed to be Haitians and killed. | As a result of the massacre, virtually the entire Haitian population in the Dominican frontier was either killed or forced to flee across the border.[134] | ||||
Romani Holocaust | German-occupied Europe | 1939[135] | 1945 | 130,000[136] | 1,500,000[137][138] |
The Romani Holocaust was the planned effort by Nazi Germany and its World War II allies and collaborators to commit ethnic cleansing and eventually genocide against European Roma and Sinti peoples during the Holocaust era.[139] A supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws issued on 26 November 1935 classified the Romani people as "enemies of the race-based state", thereby placing them in the same category as the Jews. Thus, the fate of the Roma in Europe paralleled that of the Jews in the Holocaust.[140] | 25% to 80% of Romani people in Europe killed | ||||
Holodomor | Ukraine and the northern Kuban,[141] Soviet Union | 1932 | 1933 | 3,000,000[142] | 5,000,000[142] |
The Holodomor also known as the Ukrainian Famine was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made,[143] whether or not the Holodomor was intentional and therefore constitutes a genocide under the Genocide Convention is debated by scholars.[144][145] | 10% of Ukraine's population[146] Over 35% of Ukrainians in Kazakhstan[147] | ||||
Libyan genocide | Italian Libya | 1929 | 1932 | 83,000[148] | 125,000+[149] |
The Libyan genocide was the genocide of Libyan Arabs and the systematic destruction of Libyan culture, particularly during and after the Second Italo-Senussi War between 1929 and 1934.[150] During this period, between 83,000 and 125,000 Libyans were killed by Italian colonial authorities under Benito Mussolini. | 25% of Cyrenaican population[151] Half of the nomadic Bedouin population[152] | ||||
Osage Indian murders | Oklahoma, United States | 1918 | 1931 | 60[153] | 200+[154] |
The Osage Indian murders was a plot by William King Hale and others to kill full-blood Osage to gain the mineral rights for their reservation. The events have been characterized as a genocide due to the intentions of its perpetrators to destroy the Osage nation.[155][156][157][158][159] | Estimates vary widely, with 10% of 591 full-blood Osage being killed with the lowest estimate.[160] | ||||
Armenian genocide | Ottoman Empire (now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) | 1915 | 1917 | 600,000[161] | 1,500,000[162] |
Approximately 90% of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were killed or expelled.[163] The share of Christians in area within Turkey's current borders declined from 20-22% in 1914, or about 3.3.–3.6 million people, to around 3% in 1927.[164] | |||||
Sayfo | Ottoman Empire (now Turkey, Syria and Iraq) | 1915 | 1919 | 200,000[165] | 750,000[166] |
The Armenian genocide,[167][168] carried out by the Young Turks, included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, and mass starvation. It occurred concurrently with the Assyrian and Greek genocides; some scholars consider these to form a broader genocide targeting all of the Christians in Anatolia.[169][170] Overall, about 2 million Christians were killed in Anatolia between 1894 and 1924, 40 percent of the original population.[171] | |||||
Greek genocide and Pontic genocide | Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) | 1914 | 1922 | 300,000[172] | 900,000[173] |
For the Greek genocide other sources give 500,000–1,200,000 casualties between Pontic, Cappadocian and Ionians Greeks. The genocide, instigated by the Ottoman government, included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches, summary expulsions, arbitrary executions, and destruction of Greek Orthodox cultural, historical and religious monuments. | At least 25% of Greeks in Anatolia (Turkey) killed [citation needed] | ||||
Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars | Scutari, Kosovo, and Manastir vilayets, Ottoman Empire | 1912 | 1913 | 120,000[174][175] | 270,000[176] |
Herero and Nama genocide | German South West Africa (now Namibia) | 1904 | 1908 | 34,000[177] | 110,000[178][179] |
The Genocide in German South West Africa was the campaign to exterminate the Herero and Nama people that the German Empire undertook in German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia). It is considered one of the first genocides of the 20th century. | 60% (24,000 out of 40,000[177]) to 81.25% (65,000[180][181] out of 80,000[182]) of total Herero and 50%[177] of Nama population killed. | ||||
Armenian massacres of 1894–1896 | Six Vilayets, Ottoman Empire | 1894 | 1896 | 200,000[183] | 300,000[183] |
The Hamidian massacres (Armenian: Համիդյան ջարդեր, Turkish: Hamidiye Katliamı, French: Massacres hamidiens), also referred to as the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896[184] and Armenian genocide,[184] were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that took place in the mid-1890s. It was estimated casualties ranged from 80,000 to 300,000,[185] resulting in 50,000 orphaned children.[186] The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology.[183] Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms in some cases, such as the Diyarbekir massacre, where, at least according to one contemporary source, up to 25,000 Assyrians were also killed.[187]The massacres began in the Ottoman interior in 1894, before becoming more widespread in the following years. Between 1894 and 1896 was when the majority of the murders took place. The massacres began tapering off in 1897, following international condemnation of Abdul Hamid. The harshest measures were directed against the long persecuted Armenian community as calls for civil reform and better treatment from the government went ignored. The Ottomans made no allowances for the victims' age or gender, and massacred all with brutal force.[188] This occurred at a time when the telegraph could spread news around the world, and the massacres received extensive coverage in the media of Western Europe and North America. | |||||
Selk'nam genocide | Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Argentina | 1880 | 1910 | 2,500[189] | 4,000[190] |
The Selk'nam Genocide was the genocide of the Selk'nam people, indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego in South America, from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century. Spanning a period of between ten and fifteen years the Selk'nam, which had an estimated population of between three and four thousand, saw their numbers reduced to 500.[189] | 84%The genocide reduced their numbers from around 3,000 to about 500 people.[191][192] | ||||
Putumayo genocide | Present-day Putumayo Department, Colombia | 1879 | 1913 | 32,000[193] | 40,000+[194][195] |
Members of the Huitoto, Andoques, Yaguas, Ocaina and Boras groups were hunted and enslaved so they could be used to extract latex.[196] During this time period, several tribes became extinct.[197] | 80–86% of the total population in the Putumayo region perished during the Amazon rubber boom.[198][N 4] | ||||
Circassian genocide | Circassia, Russian Empire | 1864[N 5] | 1867 | 1,000,000[200] | 2,000,000[201][202] |
The Circassian genocide refers to the ethnic cleansing, massive annihilation, displacement,[203] destruction and expulsion of the majority of the indigenous Circassians from historical Circassia, which roughly encompassed the major part of the North Caucasus and the northeast shore of the Black Sea. This occurred in the aftermath of the Caucasian War in the last quarter of the 19th century.[204] The displaced people moved primarily to the Ottoman Empire.Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's May 1994 statement admitted that resistance to the tsarist forces was legitimate, but he did not recognise "the guilt of the tsarist government for the genocide."[205] In 1997 and 1998, the leaders of Kabardino-Balkaria and of Adygea sent appeals to the Duma to reconsider the situation and to issue the needed apology; to date, there has been no response from Moscow. In October 2006, the Adygeyan public organizations of Russia, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Syria, the United States, Belgium, Canada and Germany have sent the president of the European Parliament a letter with the request to recognise the genocide against Adygean (Circassian) people.[206]Following a consultation with academics, human rights activists and Circassian diaspora groups and parliamentary discussions in Tbilisi in 2010 and 2011, Georgia became the first country to use the word "genocide" to refer to the events.[207][208][209] On 20 May 2011 the parliament of the Republic of Georgia declared in its resolution[210] that the mass annihilation of the Cherkess (Adyghe) people during the Russian-Caucasian war and thereafter constituted genocide as defined in the Hague Convention of 1907 and the UN Convention of 1948. | 95%–97% of total Circassian population killed or deported by the forces of Tsarist Russia.[211][212] Only a small percentage who accepted to convert to Christianity, Russify and resettle within the Russian Empire were spared. The remaining Circassian populations who refused were thus forcefully dispersed, deported or killed. Today, most Circassians live in exile.[213] | ||||
California genocide | California, United States | 1846 | 1873 | 9,492–16,094 |
120,000[215][N 7] |
The California genocide[214][215] refers to the destruction of individual tribes like the Yuki people during the Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856–1859,[216] general massacres perpetrated by settlers chasing the gold rush against Indians like the Bloodsland massacre, or Klamath River "War of Extermination"[217] along with the overall decline of the Indian population of California due to disease and starvation exacerbated by the massacres. | Amerindian population in California declined by 80% during the period | ||||
Queensland Aboriginal genocide | Queensland | 1840 | 1897 | 10,000[218] | 65,180[219] |
Queensland represents the single bloodiest colonial frontier in Australia. Thus the records of Queensland document the most frequent reports of shootings and massacres of indigenous people, the three deadliest massacres on white settlers, the most disreputable frontier police force, and the highest number of white victims to frontier violence on record in any Australian colony.[220] Thus some sources have characterized these events as a Queensland Aboriginal genocide.[221][222][223][218] | 3.3% to over 50% of the aboriginal population was killed (10,000[218] to 65,180[219] killed out of 125,600)[clarification needed] | ||||
Moriori genocide | Chatham Islands, New Zealand | 1835 | 1863 | 1,900[224][225] | 1,900 |
The genocide of the Moriori began in the fall of 1835. The invasions of the Chatham Islands by Maori from New Zealand left the Moriori people and their culture to die off. Those who survived were either kept as slaves or eaten and Moriori were not sanctioned to marry other Moriori or have children within their race. This caused their people and their language to be endangered. There were only 101 Moriori people left out of 2000 who had survived in 1863.[226] | 95% of the Moriori population was eradicated by the invasion from Taranaki, a group of people from the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama iwi.[227][228] All were enslaved and many were cannibalised.[229] The Moriori language is now extinct.[226][230] | ||||
Massacre of Salsipuedes | Uruguay | 1831 | 40[231] | 40 | |
[232][233] | |||||
Trail of Tears | Southeastern United States | 1830 | 1850 | 12,000[234] | 16,000[234] |
The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850, and the additional thousands of Native Americans within that were ethnically cleansed by the United States government.[235] A variety of scholars have classified the Trail of Tears as either a genocide in and of itself,[N 8] or as a genocidal act within the broader genocide of Native Americans.[242][N 9] | Figures for the number of deaths per Native American group that was forcibly relocated can be found at Trail of Tears § Statistics. | ||||
Black War (Genocide of Aboriginal Tasmanians) | Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) | 1825 | 1832 | 400 [257] | 1,000 [257] |
The extinction of Aboriginal Tasmanians was called an archetypal case of genocide by Rafael Lemkin[258] (coiner of the word genocide) among other historians, a view supported by more recent genocide scholars like Ben Kiernan who covered it in his book Blood and Soil: A History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. This extinction also includes the Black War, which would make the war an act of genocide.[259] Historians like Keith Windschuttle among other historians disagree with this interpretation in discourse known as the History wars. | ~100%[259] | ||||
1804 Haiti massacre | Haiti | 1804 | 3,000[260] | 5,000[260] | |
The 1804 Haiti massacre is considered to be a genocide by many scholars,[261][262] as it was intended to destroy the Franco-Haitian population following the Haitian Revolution. The massacre was ordered by King Jean-Jacques Dessalines to remove the remainder of the white population from Haiti, and lasted from January to 22 April 1804. During the massacre, entire families were tortured and killed, and by the end of it, Haiti's white population was virtually non-existent.[263][264] | |||||
Dzungar genocide | Dzungaria, Qing dynasty China | 1755 | 1758 | 480,000[265] | 600,000[265] |
The Manchu Qianlong Emperor of Qing China issued his orders for his Manchu Bannermen to carry out the genocide and eradication of the Dzungar nation, ordering the massacre of all the Dzungar men and enslaving Dzungar women and children.[266] The Qianlong Emperor moved the remaining Zunghar people to the mainland and ordered the generals to kill all the men in Barkol or Suzhou, and divided their wives and children to Qing soldiers.[267][268] The Qing soldiers who massacred the Dzungars were Manchu Bannermen and Khalkha Mongols. In an account of the war, Wei Yuan wrote that about 40% of the Dzungar households were killed by smallpox, 20% fled to Russia or the Kazakh Khanate, and 30% were killed by the army, leaving no yurts in an area of several thousands of Chinese miles except those of the surrendered.[265][269][270] Clarke wrote 80%, or between 480,000 and 600,000 people, were killed between 1755 and 1758 in what "amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people."[265][271] Historian Peter Perdue has shown that the extermination of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of extermination launched by the Qianlong Emperor.[265] Although this "deliberate use of massacre" has been largely ignored by modern scholars,[265] Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence".[272] | 80% of 600,000 Zungharian Oirats killed | ||||
Taíno genocide | Hispaniola | 1492 | 1514 | 68,000[273] | 968,000[273] |
The Taíno genocide refers to the extermination of the indigenous population of Hispaniola due to forced labor and exploitation by the Spanish. Raphael Lemkin (coiner of the term genocide) considers Spain's abuses of the native population of the Americas to constitute cultural and even outright genocide including the abuses of the Encomienda system. He described slavery as "cultural genocide par excellence" noting "it is the most effective and thorough method of destroying culture, of desocializing human beings." He considers colonist guilty due to failing to halt the abuses of the system despite royal orders. He also notes the sexual abuse of Spanish colonizers of Native women as acts of "biological genocide."[274] University of Hawaii historian David Stannard describes the encomienda as a genocidal system which "had driven many millions of native peoples in Central and South America to early and agonizing deaths."[275] Yale University's genocide studies program supports this view regarding abuses in Hispaniola.[273] Andrés Reséndez argues that even though the Spanish were aware of the spread of smallpox, they made no mention of it until 1519, a quarter century after Columbus arrived in Hispaniola.[276] Instead he contends that enslavement in gold and silver mines was the primary reason why the Native American population of Hispaniola dropped so significantly[277][276] and that even though disease was a factor, the native population would have rebounded the same way Europeans did during the Black Death if it were not for the constant enslavement they were subject to.[276] According to anthropologist Jason Hickel, a third of Arawak workers died every six months from lethal forced labor in the mines.[278] | 68% to over 96% of the Taíno population perished under Spanish rule.[273] | ||||
Albigensian Crusade (Cathar genocide) | Languedoc (now France) | 1209 | 1229 | 200,000[279] | 1,000,000[280] |
The Albigensian Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism, a Christian sect, in Languedoc, in southern France. The Catholic Church considered them heretics and ordered that they should be completely eradicated.[281] Raphael Lemkin referred to the Albigensian Crusade as "one of the most conclusive cases of genocide in religious history".[282] Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Solveig Björnson describe it as "the first ideological genocide."[283] |
I have estimated between 491,000 and 522,000 Tutsi, nearly two thirds of Rwanda's pre-genocide Tutsi population, were killed between 6 April and 19 July 1994. I calculated this death toll by subtracting my estimate of between 278,000 and 309,000 Tutsi survivors from my estimate of a baseline Tutsi population of almost exactly 800,000, or 10.8% of the overall population, on the eve of the genocide.
Despite the various methodological disagreements among them, none of the scholars who participated in this forum gives credence to the official figure of 1,074,107 victims... Given the rigour of the various quantitative methodologies involved, this forum's overarching finding that the death toll of 1994 is nowhere near the one-million-mark is – scientifically speaking – incontrovertible.
The government eventually settled on 'more than a million', a claim which few outside Rwanda have taken seriously.
In comparison with estimates at the higher and lower ends, my estimate is significantly lower than the Government of Rwanda's genocide census figure of 1,006,031 Tutsi killed. I believe this number is not credible.
The Micombero regime responded with a genocidal repression that is estimated to have caused over a hundred thousand victims and forced several hundred thousand Hutus into exile
The human death toll over only 267 days was incredible. Just to give for five out of the eighteen districts some incomplete statistics published in Bangladesh newspapers or by an Inquiry Committee, the Pakistani army killed 100,000 Bengalis in Dacca, 150,000 in Khulna, 75,000 in Jessore, 95,000 in Comilla, and 100,000 in Chittagong. For eighteen districts the total is 1,247,000 killed. This was an incomplete toll, and to this day no one really knows the final toll. Some estimates of the democide (i.e. Rummel's 'death by government') are much lower—one is of 300,000 dead—but most range from 1 million to 3 million. ... The Pakistani army and allied paramilitary groups killed about one out of every sixty-one people in Pakistan overall; one out of every twenty-five Bengalis, Hindus, and others in East Pakistan. If the rate of killing for all of Pakistan is annualised over the years the Yahya martial law regime was in power (March 1969 to December 1971), then this one regime was more lethal than that of the Soviet Union, China under the communists, or Japan under the military (even through World War II).
The U.S. played a very powerful and direct role in the life of this institution, the army, that went on to commit genocide
...between 5 and 6 million. According to Wolfgang Benz, at least 5.29 million up to around 6 million Jews of every age were murdered (Benz 1991, 17), whereas Raul Hilberg counts 5.1 million dead (Hilberg 2003, 1320–21)
...Raul Hilberg... 5.1 million... Israel Gutman and Robert Rozett... between 5–5 and 5.8 million... Wolfgang Benz... 6.2 million. The figures remain imprecise for several reasons, including...
4,204,400 to 4,575,400... the lowest count by any reputable study.
Bloxham... "Between 5,100,000 and 6,200,000...
... between five and six million. The late Raul Hilberg, for example, political scientist and widely acknowledged dean of Holocaust historiography, estimated 5.1 million Jewish victims, and that number did not change in the third edition of his monumental work. This indicates, one might presume, that he was satisfied with his rigorous investigation into this figure... The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust offers a number of "more than" five million in its definition of the Holocaust.18 In 2007 the Division of the Senior Historian at the USHMM developed a series of estimates (dependent on means of counting) of between 5.65 million and 5.93 million, based on published accounts by Hilberg and others as well as on Soviet documents available only since 1991... No estimate has gone higher than six million.
At least six million human beings were deliberately and systematically murdered because they were Jews.
Six million Jews (not fewer, most probably more) were murdered in the course of the Final Solution of the Jewish question,
The genocide of the Jews — according to Eichmann's figures more than 6 million (4 million in extermination camps) had been murdered by the summer of 1944 . . . Estimates of the total losses range from 5 to 7 million. At any rate, the total number of Jews in Europe declined from 9.2 to 3.1 million.
Estimates of the total losses range from 5 to 7 million.
According to the American Jewish Yearbook, the Jewish population of Europe was about 9.5 million in 1933. In 1950, the Jewish population of Europe was about 3.5 million.
The total number of prisoners taken by the German armies in the USSR was in the region of 5.5 million. Of these, the astounding number of 3.5 million or more had been lost by the middle of 1944 and the assumption must be that they were either deliberately killed or done to death by criminal negligence. Nearly two million of them died in camps and close on another million disappeared while in military custody either in the USSR or in rear areas; a further quarter of a million disappeared or died in transit between the front and destinations in the rear; another 473,000 died or were killed in military custody in Germany or Poland.
'Next to the Jews in Europe,' wrote Alexander Werth', 'the biggest single German crime was undoubtedly the extermination by hunger, exposure and in other ways of ... Russian war prisoners.' Yet the murder of at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs is one of the least-known of modern genocides; there is still no full-length book on the subject in English. It also stands as one of the most intensive genocides of all time: 'a holocaust that devoured millions,' as Catherine Merridale acknowledges. The large majority of POWs, some 2.8 million, were killed in just eight months of 1941–42, a rate of slaughter matched (to my knowledge) only by the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
Although the estimates of the number of Serbs murdered by the regime vary, even the most conservative figures suggest that out of a pre-war population of 1.9 million, at least 200,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 died at the hands of Ustasha death squads, were executed, or perished in the state's concentration camps.
In all, approximately 30,000 Jews (between 75-80 percent of the Jews within the NDH) died during the Holocaust, the majority at the hands of the Ustasha, although the NDH also transferred some 7,000 Jews to the Nazis to be deported to Auschwitz... The NDH also killed an estimated 25,000 or more Roma men, women, and children, the vast majority of the Roma population under its control.
According to Polish sources, about three million ethnic Poles lost their lives during the war, or about 10 per cent of the Polish nation(...) large numbers were murdered, or died as a result of direct German actions such as denying food or medical treatment to Poles, or incarceration in concentration camps. There is no way of estimating the exact proportions, but I believe it would be difficult to deny that we have here a case of mass murder directed against Poles. German plans regarding Poles talked about denationalizing the Polish people, or in other words, making them into individuals who would no longer have any national identity(...)This is a case of genocide – a purposeful attempt toeliminate an ethnicity or a nation, accompanied by the murder of large numbers of the targeted group.
It is estimated that the Germans killed between 1.8 and 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II. In addition, the Germans murdered at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland.
...and the ruthlessness of German rule in Poland, where three million gentiles also perished and the punishment for hiding a Jew was execution of captured rescuers and their immediate families.
Rubenstein is the Northeast regional director of Amnesty International USA and a co-editor of The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories.
Similar to famines in Ireland in 1846–1851 (Ó Gráda 2007) and China in 1959–1961 (Meng, Qian and Yared 2015), the politics behind Holodomor have been a focus of historiographic debate. The most common interpretation is that Holodomor was 'terror by hunger' (Conquest 1987, 224), 'state aggression' (Applebaum 2017) and 'clearly premeditated mass murder' (Snyder 2010, 42). Others view it as an unintended by-product of Stalin's economic policies (Kotkin 2017; Naumenko 2017), precipitated by natural factors like adverse weather and crop infestation (Davies and Wheatcroft 1996; Tauger 2001).
To authorize the Osage terror as genocide and to connect a corner of Oklahoma to a global tribal history, she recreates the Holocaust as a site of hybridity.
At that time the mixed bloods had reached about 33 percent or the total. Since then, the population has steadily increased, but the number or full bloods has continued to decline. In 1910, 591, or 43.0%, claimed to be of full blood, but by 1930 the number of full bloods had declined to 545, or 23.3 percent.
Put another way – if these same events occurred today, there can be no doubt that prosecutions before the ICC of Talaat and other CUP officials for genocide, for persecution and for other crimes against humanity would succeed. Turkey would be held responsible for genocide and for persecution by the ICJ and would be required to make reparation.14 That Court would also hold Germany responsible for complicity with the genocide and persecution, since it had full knowledge of the massacres and deportations and decided not to use its power and influence over the Ottomans to stop them. But to the overarching legal question that troubles the international community today, namely whether the killings of Armenians in 1915 can properly be described as a genocide, the analysis in this chapter returns are sounding affirmative answer.
Starting from the claim by the Armenian community and the majority of historians that the 1915–1916 Armenian massacres and deportations constitute genocide as well as Turkey's fierce opposition to such a qualification, this paper investigates the possibility of identifying those massacres and deportations as the destruction of a nation. On the basis of a thorough analysis of the facts and the required mental element, the author shows that a deliberate destruction, in a substantial part, of the Armenian Christian nation as such, took place in those years. To come to this conclusion, this paper borrows the very same determinants as those used in the case-law of the Military Tribunals in occupied Germany, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in genocide cases.
Although the term genocide was not coined until 1944, most scholars agree that the mass murder of Armenians fits this definition. The CUP government systematically used an emergency military situation to effect a long-term population policy aimed at strengthening Muslim Turkish elements in Anatolia at the expense of the Christian population (primarily Armenians, but also Christian Assyrians). Ottoman, Armenian, US, British, French, German, and Austrian documents from the time reveal that the CUP leadership intentionally targeted the Armenian population of Anatolia.
Activists tend to inflate the overall total of Ottoman Greek deaths, from the cautious estimates between 300,000 to 700,000...
An estimate of the Pontian Greek death toll at all stages of the anti-Christian genocide is about 350,000; for all the Greeks of the Ottoman realm taken together, the toll surely exceeded half a million, and may approach the 900,000 killed that a team of US researchers found in the early postwar period.
According to Serbian Social Democrat politician Kosta Novakovic, from October 1912 to the end of 1913, the Serbo-Montenegrin regime exterminated more than 120,000 Albanians of all ages, and forcibly expelled more than 50,000 Albanians to the Ottoman Empire and Albania.
120,000-270,000 Albanians were killed and approximately 250,000 Albanians were expelled between 1912 and 1914.
paragraphs 14 to 24, pages 5 to 10
The number of Armenian children under twelve years of age made orphans by the massacres of 1895 is estimated by the missionaries at 50.000
The corroboration between both Turkish and Russian documents puts the number of Circassian deaths by military operations and pre-planned massacres between 1.5 – 2 million; ...
quoted in Sacramento newspaper
Overall, then, although the U.S. policy of removal was not intended to kill as many Indians as possible, answering the question of genocide for this particular phase of United States–Indian relations with an absolute "no" too easily dismisses the matter. ... In its outcome and in the means used to gain compliance, the policy had genocidal dimensions.
The Haitian genocide and its historical counterparts [...] The 1804 Haitian genocide
The Great Rebellion and the Haitian slave uprising are two examples of what we refer to as "subaltern genocide": cases in which subaltern actors—those objectively oppressed and disempowered—adopt genocidal strategies to vanquish their[...]– Also stated in Jones, Adam (26 June 2013). "11: "Subaltern genocide: Genocides by the oppressed."". The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflections. Routledge. p. 169. ISBN 9781135047153 – via Google Books.
Date range of image: 1492 to 1514
...w tych przypadkach, w których polska ludnosc cywilna podjela walke z Wehrmachtem, lecz ujeta przez wroga mordowana byla w egzekucjach poza sama walka, stawala sie ofiara oczywistych zbrodni wojennych. Konstatacja ta opiera sie takze na art. 6 statutu Miedzynarodowego Trybunalu Wojskowego w Norymberdze z 8 sierpnia 1945 r., który w punkcie b jako postaci zbrodni wojennych wskazuje pogwalcenie praw i zwyczajów wojennych przez morderstwa ludnosci cywilnej i jenców wojennych, a takze zabijanie zakladników oraz rozmyslne i bezcelowe burzenie miast, osad i wsi lub niszczenie nieusprawiedliwione wojskowa koniecznoscia.
Jì shù shí wàn hù zhōng, xiān dòu sǐzhě shí zhī sì, jì cuàn rù èluósī hāsàkè zhě shí zhī èr, zú jiān yú dàbīng zhě shí zhī sān. Chú fùrú chōng shǎng wài, zhìjīn wéi lái jiàng shòu tún zhī è lǔ tè ruògān hù, biān shè zuǒ lǐng áng jí, cǐwài shù qiān lǐ jiān, wú wǎlá yī zhān zhàng.計數十萬戶中,先痘死者十之四,繼竄入俄羅斯哈薩克者十之二,卒殲於大兵者十之三。除婦孺充賞外,至今惟來降受屯之厄鲁特若干戶,編設佐領昂吉,此外數千里間,無瓦剌一氊帳。 [Among the hundreds of thousands of households, four out of ten died of pox first, two out of ten fled into Russian Kazakhs, and three out of ten were killed by the soldiers. In addition to the generous rewards for women and children, so far only a few families from Erut who have come to the camp have set up assistants and leaders Angji. In addition, there is not a single tent with tiles or tiles for thousands of miles.]
According to the 1985 United Nations' Whitaker Report, some 65,000 Herero (80 percent of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50% of the total Nama population) were killed between 1904 and 1907